The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[Ghari Sher]

(11-06-2018, 10:42 AM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote:

(11-05-2018, 11:03 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:

(11-05-2018, 08:25 PM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote:

(11-02-2018, 09:34 PM)tigerluver Wrote:

(11-02-2018, 12:52 PM)Wolverine Wrote:

(11-02-2018, 12:13 PM)Spalea Wrote: Thus I can easily admit that p. Atrox, cave lion and p. leo are different species... different species of lions ? 

They are different species of Panthera's.

Here budy arise the philosophical question what does mean "lion"? Inside the genus Panthera there are/were many different species, all of them are more or less closely related. If you take a bunch of them- P.leo, P.fossilis and P.atrox, separate from other species like Panthera onca (jaguar), Panthera tigris (tiger), Panthera pardus and call them "lions", then you should create a separate taxonomic unit for "lions" inside genus Panthera. But since such a separate taxonomic unit does not exist its not clear what do you call "lions". Before many people called Panthera atrox  a "giant jaguar" and probably they also had some reasons for that.

P. atrox was called the "giant jaguar" at one point because a study (Christiansen and Harris 2009) found that its skull was more similar to that of the jaguar than the lion. Genetic testing shows this similarity is due to convergent evolution rather than a genetic proximity between P. atrox and P. onca.

In my opinion, three prehistoric lions(Panthera fossils, Panthera atrox, Panthera spalea) could also up to over 400kg maximum weight. But Panthera spalea's inner gap as big as tiger

Panthera spelaea up to 400 kg should be the earlier one in between the transitional phase of Panthera spelaea fossilis and Panthera spelaea spelaea.

Panthera spelaea spelaea was the final stabilized form of the Cave lion, and this chronospecies was 350 kg maximum, comparable to the largest Amur tiger in the history.

It's said that in later Pleistocene about  after 70000 years ago, European cave lion's bodysize was smaller and not gigantic expect the South-East European population still retained the gigantic specimen, from then on, more and more gigantic cave lion's population were moved to the East, like some of the huge skull specimens from Ural mountains in Russia, on the other hand, some gigantic cave lion's skulls from North-Eastern Asia like HeiLongJiang province in China may also belonged to the European cave lions which had moved to the East.

*This image is copyright of its original author

@Spalea , is the later Pleistocene cave lion would looks like this? well one of the interesting character is later cave lions would owned the long canines like tiger，their faces also become round and short.

Allow me to weigh in on this........


Meditations on the life appearance of the cave lion (Panthera spelaea)

This is something that I've really ruminated on, especially in the last few months, after having some online discourse with an anonymous friend of mine, when we were working together on making a journal.
SargeantSatan and I wrote a journal on the cave lion (he did most of the actual writing, I helped in regards to the information/argued over the details), and therein you can read most of the stuff I'm about to talk about here on the cave lion's appearance, but I'll paraphrase here:
https://www.deviantart.com/sargeantsatan...-749253167
 
The face

One thing that is interestingly seen in paleolithic art of the lion is the presence of cheetah-like tear markings, which run from the tear duct down towards the bottom of the face, like they do in the cheetah, and, interestingly enough, in the Arabian leopard.

*This image is copyright of its original author

It seems that the cave lion also had these markings on its face. Their function is not clear, but it has been hypothesised that the cheetah's tear markings are used to help reduce glare from the sun, a possible function which could also be true of the leopard, and for a cat that lived in an environment of clear skies and occassional high-albedo snow, the cave lion. This is just my speculation though.

Mane

OK, so the de facto position is that the cave lion was maneless, but I think it would really depend on the definition you gave of "mane".

While there is no evidence for a large, contrastingly-coloured mane in the cave lion, some long neck fur can be seen in some lion representations, such as at the Chauvet(top right) and La Marche (middle right) paintings shown below

*This image is copyright of its original author

Additionally, some carvings, such as the lion at the Three Brothers cave, show what appear to be "lamb chops" around the face.

*This image is copyright of its original author

So they had a "mane" of sorts, but one which was greatly reduced in comparison to extant African lions, probably comparable to the manes of Tsavo lions and to some extent Asiatic lions, in terms of the size of the mane, but not in colour, the neck fur in males and females would usually be quite light in colour since there's no evidence for the dark mane seen in modern lions since it isn't demarcated as such, the fur around the neck in modern lions is usually light anyway, and there will be another reason which I will explain in due time.

Ears

In his 2005 book, The Nature of Paleolithic Art, R. Dale Guthrie notes the small ears of lions seen in European cave paintings:

Quote:The ears of lions in paleolithic images are significantly smaller than the ears of living lions, indicating a cold adaptation.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3u6J...rs&f=false

While we can't expect Paleolithic images to be 100% accurate in terms of proportion to the real animal, I can see Guthrie's point, in many examples of paleolithic art, the ears of cave lions are shown as being quite small, at least when you compare them to the ears of African lions. It would make a fair amount of sense for a cold-adapted cat to have small ears, so I suppose Guthrie's inference holds merit.
e.g.:

*This image is copyright of its original author

These two lions from Chauvet are far from the only example of small ears in paleolithic lion art, but you get the gist, compared to this Tsavo lion, these cave lions have somewhat reduced ears.
So this is an overall illustration by me, quite rough, on the life appearance of the head+neck area of a cave lion male, taking the facial markings, neck fur and ears into account:

*This image is copyright of its original author

OK, I think the ears are still too big in this one, so my bad, but I'll show more illustrations in good time.




But now we get to the actual meat that I was wanting to talk about - some details on the cave lion's appearance that have not been widely addressed.

Shoulders

A line is often depicted immediately in front of the shoulders. What this represents is also up for debate. Guthrie (2005) interpreted this as being a sort of stripe immediately in front of the shoulders.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Alternatively, this has also been interpreted as a break in hue, from the brown body fur at the shoulders to the lighter neck fur (what I mentioned before about the mane, it doesn't seem to be golden like in the modern lion but rather just white/light brown/the colour of regular throat and ventral fur.)
This would be a rather neat explanation, since the fur immediately in front of the shoulders is often quite lightly coloured in lions, so the transition between the light neck and darker shoulders could explain the shoulder line seen in paintings/carvings.

*This image is copyright of its original author

It could be that this transition was more dramatic in the cave lion.

Also, I suspect that this shoulder transition was variable. Some depictions, such as the La Vache carving (a bovine rib), where lionesses are shown with a "normal" neck transition.

*This image is copyright of its original author

But looking to the ventrum, we see what appears to be an odd marking along the side of the animal.

Side marking?

Similar to the shoulder line, paintings and carvings often depict a line running along the length of the body, between the fore and hindlimbs, separating the torso from the underbelly.
What this is is not exactly clear. It would most intuitively signify the transition from the golden-brown torso to the white underbelly, but it is often quite thick, and very consistently shown across cave art.
Paleoartist Pat Ortega noticed this in one of the books he illustrated, and interpreted it as being a signifier of very long belly fur in the lion, with what I think it a very amusing illustration of a lion with a literal carpet of fur on its underbelly:

*This image is copyright of its original author

(Not my photo, taken by a friend who owns the book)

In his 1990 book Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe: The Story of Blue Babe, Guthrie (the same guy mentioned above), notes this side marking, and provides two main interpretations for this - some sort of marking, or simply a dramatic break in hue coloration, as mentioned above, and includes a lion illustration suggesting just that.

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However, in his 2005 book, The Nature of Paleolithic Art, he builds upon the idea that the line actually represents some sort of side marking, and includes illustrations suggesting as much.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

And here's an interesting paleoart piece (I don't know who the artist is) which depicts the cave lion like this:

*This image is copyright of its original author

(Obviously inspired by the Blue Babe find)
No cat that I was aware of possesses such a thing, only ungulates, and I can hardly see a use for a very conspicuous stripe for an open-habitat cat.

However, a friend of mine mentioned in passing that Patagonian pumas possess a "stide-stripe" of sorts, which varies between individuals:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Friends have suggested that since the Puma lives in steppe environments like the lion, the side "stripe" may serve a convergent function. I can't dismiss this possibility, but I'm still skeptical here.
The marking seen in Patagonian pumas is quite something, but in the illustrations by Guthrie (2005),
Looking to modern lions and to the Patagonian cougar, I see a golden brown>saturated brown>white belly transition to be more plausible than the "golden brown>dark brown/black>white belly" color transition shown by Guthrie.
We can see similar puma-like orange side flank fur in some lions, e.g.

*This image is copyright of its original author

My opinion on what this side-line represents is not exactly clear. At the moment I lean towards a puma-like saturated stripe, e.g. what is seen here to some extent:

*This image is copyright of its original author

(Ignore the lack of attention to the neck fur and the inaccurate tiger-striping)

A friend of mine, DiloRaptor (Dhruv Franklin: https://www.artstation.com/dhruvfranklin) has made a few reconstructions of the cave lion based on cave art, e.g.:

*This image is copyright of its original author

(Under the side-stripe interpretation)
In this one, he depicts a mating pair, where he interprets the side marking to be a crease or hue break:

*This image is copyright of its original author

My exact position on the life appearance of the cave lion is not entirely clear, but that's what we know.
I made a schematic going through the various plausible interpretations of the pelage of the cave lion based on cave art.

*This image is copyright of its original author

(Ignore the anatomy, this pertains only to the pelage pattern)


Thoughts and suggestions on the life appearance of this cat would be more than welcome. Reply